I guess stealing hundreds of billions of dollars isn’t a big enough crime in Phil’s world. We should focus on the important things like who had consensual sex with a consenting adult in the Oval Office, or some other important issue that has more meaning for the Right.

The sentencing of a man who single-handedly ruined thousands of people’s lives and futures, and negatively impacted tens or hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, more? Some actually would consider that newsworthy enough for one cartoon. That you’re not one of them speaks more about you than it does about JdR.

Phil, Madoff’s political giving was somewhere around 25 to 1 in favor of the Dems… don’t see your point here… the Madoff scandal touched us all, right or left… nobody was spared as he ruined hundreds of families lives… and a number of good charities… I agree with IKTIM about where he should end up…

How anyone can put a political spin on this is pure stupid. He screwed his “best friends.” He didn’t care if you were a billionaire or a not-for-profit. The politics behind this is that there wasn’t the regulation to limit or prevent this and that goes across both isles. Personally those on both sides need to come down to earth and realize the world doesn’t revolve around the Right of the Left. Most of us don’t give a crap. I think I speak for the “silent middle.”

You all misunderstand me, In China he would have been taken
straight from the courtroom and had a bullet put in the back of his
head. His wife would have had to pay for the bullet from her 2.5 million. Forgive my blood thirsty thought but it would have been rough justice. A country club cell is not much in the way of
justice!

My point is that this is old news. There are more pressing issues
that could have been raised

Fred – “The silent middle” stuck us with eight years of the Cheney puppeted Bush regime before they woke up last November and they are just as likely to become pawns of the Right again if they don’t get involved more in the discussion. Madoff is just an Uber-crook and personally, I will be pissed if he ends up in one of the country club prisons the rich think they deserve when they get caught red handed.

Fred, buddy, you invoked politics into the commentary on the cartoon… your post could hardly be construed as the voice of the silent middle… If that was your point, than so be it, but it still does not dismiss the importance of what he did and the impact it will have… further he did it under the supervision and scrutinity of the republican white house for 8 years… both sides screwed up, it is bad all around and will be the stuff of entire text books and case studies eventually…

The silent middle has now figured out that they were had by
the Obamites. (Those who get a leg tingle when they talk
about The One) I have spoken to a half dozen people who
now regret their vote in November.

Phil, you got to be kidding me! I think no matter what JdR draws or comments on you will already have blinders on for how you interpret it.

Sadly, IKTIM, he probably will be. I don’t think leniency is an entirely sarcastic remark from his cellmate. There’s two brands of justice in this country. One for the haves and another for the have-nots.

I agree that the middle needs to speak up — and loudly. I am so sick of hearing myself say middle road, people, middle road. And (to paraphrase one of my favorite singer-songwriters) having my words like silent raindrops fall and echo in the wells of silence. That’s the real sanity. Somewhere between the two extremes.

Donna – The big problem with politics in the U.S. today is that it is always framed in terms of Left vs. Right. The Left that the Right rails against no longer has relevance, but their rhetoric would have you believe we are all going to be walking around greeting each other as “Comrade” and living in tiny cardboard apartments, if we deviate even slightly from their rigid doctrine. The new left actually encompasses the desires of the center as well as the left of that point, which still is not acceptable to their dogmatic and almost religiously fanatic mindset. The Right as it exists today, unfortunately, sits teetering on a precipice that is only one tiny push away from leading us all down a path that has more in common with what occurred in Germany in the early 1930s. We are sitting here much like the Social Democrats where then, just waiting for them to snap and marshal their armed mindless minions (ignorant gun-nut jingoists) to do something they will have the gall to call “Saving America”.

The “center” as you call it has ben pushed so far left there is no
center any longer. The fanatic socialist mindset is rearing it’s nasty head, and naturally, the ultra liberal houses are MORE than willing to tax and spend us into ruination. Te fact thatyou beleive in nothing, EXCEPT a govnernment that has PROVEN it’s ineptitude is interesting and you called me an enigma…

Phil – You don’t bother me at all and letting you spout the foolishness of Right-wing dogma, allows me to just sit back and watch you discredit yourself.

As to jakester’s assertion that the center has been, ” pushed so far left there is no center any longer”, I can think of no greater proof that that has occurred than because the Right is so far out on the lunatic fringe where people with any sense of reality will, by comparison, be far to the left of that radical insane position.

Well, Phil, why would you do that? Are you really not interested in serious discussion at all? If not, okay. But I’ll consider the source next time.

Umm, Jakester, if you could only hear how many times my daughter jokingly calls me Hyde (from “That 70′s Show”) precisely because I don’t trust the government. Check out my discussion of the census on Roger Green’s TU blog.

As I said, middle road. First of all, the Right and Left are both too extreme. I do think IKTIM has a point because I know a lot of people like him and me who are labelled left because we’re not Christian nutters and are for social freedoms and recognize the importance of the working poor but the Left with a capital L also seems to be getting way too damned extreme too. As he says.

I’m actually middle of the road on a lot but there’s a lot more government needs to be doing for its citizens, especially those not born into privilege. Health care should not be something you’re entitled to only if you have enough money or an employer who offers health insurance. Minimum wage needs to be brought up to a living wage. Public transit needs to improve instead of continually deterioating. For openers.

But I do not support favoritism instead of equal opportunity for women and minorities or legalizing marijuana (though I see both sides of the argument on this one). I too get angered when I see people getting handed college educations for screwing up (jail and illegitimate babies) when I did things the right way and couldn’t get one at the time I turned 18 and had to go out in the world without one even as I recognize that it helps rehabilitate people and helps innocent children not pay the price of their parents’ mistakes. I sit on the fence regarding the death penalty and gun control. I’d love for guns to be only in the hands of the police and military but I don’t think that’s a realistic wish and I don’t see how you can tell people they can’t hunt. I do not, however, buy the argument that we need arms to keep the government from gaining too much power.

Newsflash: whatever power the armed citzenry has, the government has tenfold, at least. I also don’t think the 2nd amendment gives the citizens the right to arms. It doesn’t deny the privilege but it only gives the right to form militia. We can argue over the word militia ’til hell freezes over (and since hell doesn’t exist, that’s one mighty long time) but those who say it means something other than the military (and the police by extension) are being disingenous and they know it. The constitution doesn’t comment one way or the other on the ordinary citizen owning a gun.

The biggest thing currently wrong with the Right is the Christian Reicht. There is way too much theocracy-pushing going on. If I hear one more fool — that’s right, fool — say freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion, I’m going to scream. The hell it doesn’t. It means just exactly that. You are free to believe or not and if you do, free to believe what you want. But there are limits to both free speech and free exercise. I am not free to go into the public schools and tell other people’s children there is no god and believers are not free to go into the schools and tell my grandson that there is a god and he’d better find Jesus or burn in hell.

That, my friend, is child abuse. In my humble opinion. And I say that as someone who was constantly threatened with hell and damnation as a child, who lost her faith because as a teen she read the Buybull in an effort to get closer to God and understand him better. I lost my faith because I read the garbage that was contained therein and I know many others who also have. I often challenge anyone who believes to read the Bible cover to cover five times from beginning to end skipping nothing without their spirtual leader’s guidance. I do so because, with one sole exception, anyone I know who actually has has lost their faith by the third reading. The one sole exception made it to her fourth reading before she started asking some doubting questions. Don’t do it to prove anything to me, do it for yourself. If your faith is strong, it will remain intact. Of course, if your faith was strong, it would not be threatened by my disbelief. To me, it’s always telling when someone’s “faith” is threatened by someone else’s disbelief, when they feel they need to defend against it. I have a good number of friends of faith because they are not hypocrites and are not threatened by my disbelief. If you really think your God exists, tell me just why you feel he needs defending from a puny human like me? Hmmmm?

And consider this, while people do often chance their mind upon learning more or hearing a new story, faith is not a choice. Either a thing sounds credible to you or it doesn’t. It’s this that makes me respect my believing friends and they respect me. Faith cannot be forced. All that can be forced is to make someone who doesn’t believe as ordered to lie about it in fear of their own safety.

The second worst thing about the Right is that they have the sense of entitlement they accuse the “welfare Moms” of. (They, in fact, often assume I am one and I never have been though I raised a child alone without benefit of child support.) They think that they have earned every penny they have and should have the right to horde it. The only purpose of the government they don’t want to pay for (and a government cannot exist without the funds to run it) is to push their social agenda on everyone else. The biggest fault is that they fail to realize that while they did earn every penny they have, they did so not only due to the civilization set up by the government that must be funded but by incorporating the labor of the working poor. They would not have a product or service to sell without employees making that possible. Hell, they wouldn’t even have anything to wipe with if the working poor didn’t produce the product. (Yes, I’m censoring that sentence for the sake of John’s blog; you all can fill in the blank.) And people like the Waltons are largely selling to even the unemployed poor. Without us, you privileged you-know-what’s would not be living such a comfortable life. Time you recognize that and the fact that more corporate welfare than individual welfare is coming from your tax dollar. So stop kevetching and screaming socialism every time someone born without a silver spoon in their mouth gets some hand up.

You think society is a mess now? Do you really want them to “just eat cake” and see what it would become like if they had no hope or opportunity? Better wise up and seeing that the working poor and those unemployed through no fault of their own have that and at least the basic necessities of life? Better start paying enough to keep the poor content because ugly things tend to happen in this world when they’re not. It isn’t too late to turn things around in this country but it’s going downhill fast and the widening gap between the rich and the poor is a very real danger.

In short, stop biting the hand that feeds you. That cowed dog may just turn vicious if you slap him too much, Waltons of this world. (Yes, even those of you who think you are merely the disappearing middle class; you are not as poor as you think, you don’t know what poverty is. And, I, for the record, am not poor though I grew up poor, I am lower middle class.)

I’m still not sure what I think of Obama. I didn’t like the bailouts but other than that I’m fairly impressed. He, at least, seems to get that people need at least a chance at finding happiness to remain contented citizens and that without having their basic necessities met, they have no chance at being happy and content. No one, including him, seems to be looking at the problem of computers taking over human jobs and they had better figure out how humans have the money to live on before computers do the majority of the work. They’re doing quite a huge chunk of it now. I’m a secretary and have been for 35 years. I’ve seen a huge takeover in my field alone. I see one secretary now where there used to be several when I started out.

Sorry for such a long rant. But I had to get that off my chest at the disrespect shown towards those who merely disagree with the “conservatives” here. I still maintain that most people are not 100% liberal or conservative.

Donna – Beautiful, but to hope that that will have any real effect on the followers of the Limbaughs, Becks and Coulters of the world, is probably outside the realm of probability and possibility. They will have to be suppressed by the rise of a more educated class, which is why they are working so hard to dummy down the educational system, or call for it to be handed over to religion, which would accomplish the same end.

Really, the right is responsibile for the dumbing down of education… let’s see… who has one of the largest political warchest’s in the state – NYTSUT does!!! Right. Who has had more influence over our education, here in NYS, not in the biblebelt, NYS for the past 20-30 years, right the teachers unions… be a neat chart to graph the decline in performace vs the NYSUT bank account and spending… How have our students performed over that period… worse and worse… now the problem of poor grades is not one parties fault, but to say the uber right god squaders are responsible is a lie… but dont let that stop you… the left let their loons run wild, while the right did the same… and the kids got screwed… and it keeps on… even in college now, there is no safe haven it seems!

#25. Kind of, wouldnt you agree all involved with schooling our kids are culpable for the charter school flight?

Do you think if NYSUT had the bright idea to start their own system they would have? Oh wait, they don’t have to now do they, they get what they want 9 out of 10 times if not more!!

In all candor, what little inheritence I will receive will be in large part because of NYSUT and their greedy approach!!!

Agreed on the attempts of forced dogma in other areas, but I have seen it myself and wonder how much of the “news” we hear is real or rhetoric. Science is sciece, based upon facts, or facts as we know them to be… religion is a faith, that requires a belief in somethings that cannot be proven… at least to me. Science is proven wrong from time to time, global cooling for one concept, flat earth, etc etc… I do not think it is zero sum game and would not want “religion” taught, though why the fuss over one nation under god, etc is silly, really… and does nothing to prepare kids for the real world.

I would also say that a lot of what is being “taught” in school has nothing to do with competing with the rest of the world academically …

We need a do-over on so much. We do things the same way because it is how we do it… the founders when the wrote our Constitution were more or less trapped in a room for hours at end… no input from commoners, etc… they did a masterful job, but even us putzes could add some better ways and ideas…

gunga dan – Before addressing any issues here, you still owe an answer on the May 18th WAMC thread on “Fair Minded Abortion Debate” that has to be addressed if you are to demand that your opinion on the matter should be forced on all women. Please take care of this.

Well, let me explain, and if I sound at all like Newdow, well, I guess since we share disbelief, we might share some of the same reactions to forced religion. I, for the record, wouldn’t have put my daughter through that, obviously since I didn’t when she was in school, but let me tell you it irked me that she had it put on her in school and she was under strict instruction from me to not say those two words. Fortunately, none of her teachers made an issue of it. Guess they knew me better than that in short order since they didn’t get away with it when they tried to inject religion into the classroom. There wasn’t a year that I didn’t have to object to some injection of it, small or big, in both New York and Colorado. I never would have stood for it being forced so if it had been, I might have wound up where Newdow did.

Simply stated — because it’s not one nation under God. In fact, it wasn’t even in the original pledge of allegience which was written by a minister but a broad-minded minister who purposely wrote it without reference to God to be all inclusive. Under God was added during McCarthyism. That should give you food for thought, unless you agree with McCarthyism.

It pisses me off whenever I see one nation under God on the money and I hope Newdow eventually gets somewhere with that too. Except for some early coins, that too wasn’t on the money until McCarthyism.

The money claims everyone in this nation is “under God”; the President is sworn in on a Bible; school children are made to recite the rewritten pledge, Bush Sr. even went so far as to say Atheists shouldn’t be citizens — and you wonder why those of us who think God doesn’t exist any more than the tooth fairy complain about being excluded and not treated as equal citizens because of “silly” things like this?

Seriously?

I was working for a State department (different one than I am now) and was harrassed on the job for being openly Atheist, because I didn’t realize that I should have said no comment or I’d rather not talk about it when someone I thought was a friend asked directly what my religious beliefs were and I was stupid enough to be honest. A good chunk of my coworkers took it personally and harrassed every day while the rest looked the other way or came to me and said it was wrong but didn’t have the guts to speak up for me. Loud comments about nonbelievers and the supervisors told me not to interject in other’s peoples conversation when I spoke up on hearing it, pics of Jesus everywhere (and I shuddered more for a Jewish coworker than myself on that because she openly talked about all four of her grandparents being Holocast surivors and she was indeed alarmed by it but, again, was afraid to speak out despite her grandparents all reacting to it with this was the kind of thing they saw before the camps) and when the Newdow decision came out a poster on the way to the ladies’ room so I had to pass it several times a day saying “it’s either one nation under God or leave it”. Hung there for weeks while I thought it would be ignored by supervisors. It was until my grievances etc en route to my protests all the way up to the Division of Human Rights hit the fan and then the director in charge of my unit pretended he had never seen it. Yeah, right. He made them take it down but seriously would he have if I wasn’t making formal complaint? Somehow I think not.

Know what Human Rights had to say about these pictures that were the common depictions of Jesus you’d see in things like Sunday school books? That wasn’t Jesus, just a man in a robe. Because they weren’t labelled with his name or a cross. I could only protest further by taking it to court within a certain number of days. Three guesses why I didn’t and the first two don’t count. I had a teenaged daughter, no means to buy top-notched security and visions of her being harmed coming to or from school and rocks through our windows if I went that public. I had a daughter to protect. If I hadn’t, I might have proceeded anyway.

And you wonder why we get up in arms about a silly, little ole thang like two words?

Tell me, would you if instead of “under God” it said “without God”? You should.

E pluribus unum is ever so much nicer. Too bad it isn’t the way the majority in this country thinks.